21 Guns
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: The end has come, it has gone, and they have survived it. That's what you think. AU
1. Scars: a refrain

**Author's Note: Well, I never thought I'd be posting this.**

**Me and Margaret, aka Swing Girl At Heart, wrote about six chapters of this thing (along with a few others) months ago. We had big plans for it. It was going to be epic, bro. But life happened, and now we have come to terms with the fact that none of our stories will ever be finished. But I think this thing is way too interesting not to share with the world. So, here it is. Maybe if ya'll like it enough, I'll squeeze out some new chapters. Maybe I'll even post some other stories I wrote. Maybe.**

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

---Lewis Carroll, _Alice's Adventure's In Wonderland_

**--**

**21 Guns**

(by ItsTimeToDance and Swing Girl At Heart)

Scars: a refrain

_"Our scars remind us that the past is real."_

_--_Papa Roach

There are facts.

**Fact: **They think they are the survivors.

Most of Earth's human population had known that it was coming for years – ever since the construction of the first atom bomb – but had pushed it further back in their minds with the explosion of each new warhead. Which is why, when it finally did come, they were completely unprepared. One bomb had gone off, leaving half of East Asia nothing but a barren wasteland, and before they knew it, countries were tearing each other apart. Actually, that's inaccurate. Maybe "blowing each other inside out" is a better description.

I don't suppose it matters, though. I wasn't born until afterwards. I was not there to remember the tidal waves of radiation that shook the ground, toppling buildings and roasting people where they stood. I was not there to watch the sky turn a blinding white before, years later, finally fading into the familiar blood red of my childhood. I was not there to see the disease caused by the radiation in its early stages, when people collapsed where they stood, writhing in agony for days, until it had changed them.

**Fact: **They think it's over.

My parents had seen all of it, though. They had survived the radiation, until they caught the disease, too, and had become something non-human. They had become the Infected. Shortly after that, it was World War II all over again – the sick were exiled, isolated, beaten, enslaved. In the cities, they were kept caged in ghettos surrounded by stretches of gravel where the naturally Immune would leave their monthly blood supply, exiting the fenced-in compound as fast as they could. It didn't matter that they were Immune; they wanted nothing to do with the savage, red-eyed humanoids that were always thirsty.

My parents had been lucky enough to be Infected much later than the rest – the ghettos had been filled, and they were sent to live in absolute isolation, where the sky was still a deep crimson, in the wilderness.

Where they had me.

But still, this doesn't seem to matter very much in the grand scheme of things any more. I'm all that's left of them; the humans from the nearby village had raided our godforsaken home, and that was that. I was forced to run, and I never saw them again. These are my scars.

But scars don't matter.

What matters is this:

I am a human.

I am Immune.

And I know, for a fact as certain as my own heartbeat, that the Infected are not monsters. My name is Edward Cullen, and my parents loved me with their dying breaths.

**Fact: **The end has only begun.

--

_Oh the sweet refrain, Soothes the soul and calms the pain Oh Albion remains, sleeping now to rise again _----"Achilles' Last Stand" Led Zeppelin


	2. Prologue I: normal

_**21 Guns**_

_**Prologue I: Normal**_

__

But am I here?

It's kind of hard to tell

I do a good impression of myself

But what's normal now anyhow?

---"Normal" by Porcupine Tree

"All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true."--Kurt Vonnegut, _Slaughter House-Five_

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only._"_---Charles Dickens, _A Tale of Two Cities_

What is the worst of woes that wait on age?

What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?

To view each loved one blotted from life's page,

And be alone on earth, as I am now.--Lord Byron, _Childe Harold_

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

When hope was high

And life worth living--"I Dreamed a Dream" Fantine, _Les Miserables_

**10.3.93**

"Your kidding."

Carlisle stopped believing in the concept of _normal _many years ago. It was an indefinable term that had long lost it's meaning as man kind continued to branch out and lose touch with their own societies. Normal was an idealist dream; when normal stopped being relative, Carlisle believed, only then would man truly be equal. Until then, he did not believe in normal; he believed in the common, he believed in the majority and the minority, and found the ideal of either applying to himself incredibly far-fetched.

But this is ridiculous.

Just..."Impossible," he said, shaking his head and staring out the window at the blood red sky. "Simply impossible."

"Carlisle," Esme whispered, meeting him beside the window pane and placing a gentle hand on the small of his back. "It's true. I can feel it."

"Esme, do you have..." he faltered with the words, struggling to keep his voice at a reasonable level, fearing the rusted probes not-so-discreetly crawling the barren grounds around the small cottage. "...any idea what this means?"

"Of course I do," she whispered harshly, glancing once again outside. Since the vampiric virus began it's rise (..all those years ago...), every vampire family was closely monitored, kept separate from those unaffected. Small ghettos had formed all throughout rural America and Europe, and only those naturally immune could so much as glance at them. Even they had to be persuaded, as someone had to deliver the monthly blood supply.

Carlisle remembered when the Great White had burst throughout the land, uprooting trees and sending all those in it's path flying into the mist, never to be seen again. He remembered the terrible sickness, the famine, the drought. The sub zero winters and the post hundred summers the next day. And, most of all, he remembered the sky, as it faded from the blinding white and into the deep, dark red.

And then the sickness had turned into something else. And that's when life had frozen.

Damn it all, he would not allow a child into this world.

"Carlisle," she said again, "I know the risks, I know--"

"--that it's _utterly impossible?" _he cried, letting his fist fly into the window pane. Splinters of soggy wood bounced off his marble, alabaster skin.

Her eyes visibly dried, their kind's equivalent to tears, and she seemed to shake. "Please," she said quietly. "Remember when we were young? How we _wanted _this? We talked about it, about children and a family and a _life--"_

"That was _before, _Esme," he said impatiently. "That was when things were normal."

She pressed a palm to her stomach. A sudden longing distorted her unnaturally lovely features, and her face seemed to melt in grief. "Why can't it be normal?" she said. "I'm sure it's happened. It's been fifty years, I'm sure we're not the first--"

"I'm sure we're not," Carlisle said harshly. "And I'm sure we won't be the first to be burned, either."

A thick breath caught in her throat and, once again, her eyes gazed at the probe, jerking in it's movements as the rust stiffened it's joints. That didn't effect it's hearing, though.

Carlisle instantly regretted his words as he looked at his wife, the innocence that he had fallen in love with rising again. The fear, the want, the longing. The desperation.

"Love," he said, wrapping his arms around her as her body racked with silent sobs. "We hardly have enough blood as it is...we don't even know if it's legal," he sighed. "Do you really want to raise a child like this?"

He felt her turn her head against his chest, catching a whiff of the ashen scent of her hair. "Yes," she said, her voice muffled. "He'll be normal...just like we were."

_TBC_


	3. II: the beginning is the end

21 Guns

_Prologue Pt II:_

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

Is it bright where you are?  
And have the people changed?  
Does it make you happy you're so strange?  
And in your darkest hour  
I hold secrets flame  
We can watch the world devoured in its pain

-"The Beginning is the End is the Beginning" by Smashing Pumpkins

There's a hardness I'm seeing in modern people. Those little moments of goofiness that used to make the day pass seem to have gone. Life's so serious now.

---Douglas Coupland, _Girlfriend in a Coma_

**6.12.94**

Carlisle was a doctor before the sickness struck.

A fairly succesful one, at that.

He remembered, through a veil so thick it was near indistinguishable, the day he earned his doctorate, his mother clapping tearfully in the stands as he waltzed proudly up the stage to accept his diploma. He remembered the roar of the crowd. Of course, it wasn't really a roar; more like a polite round of applause. But to him, a young man bursting from a ten year run at medical school, it seemed like the loudest, most beautiful music he could ever hear.

_Finally, _he had thought, _life has begun._

And now his wife cried an animalistic, inhumane wail, arching her spine and clutching the bed sheets. And Carlisle had yet to hear that tell-tale, high pitched scream.

"Keep pushing," he told her, _this shouldn't be happening this shouldn't this shouldn't _"Just keep pushing!"

"Carlisle!"

He hated to hear her scream like that. After so many years, so many unnaturally ageless years, she--_they_--had seen so much. So, so much. But she had never screamed, not once. Not when the disease was devouring her, damning her and draining her of her soul in a pit of fire, not when the child she had loved so much had been yanked from her arms and thrown into a bonfire like a dry log. Not when life had spiraled away from them. Not once.

Now, all she could do was scream.

And, when the soft, pink, impossible baby had finally come, it couldn't do anything but scream, either.

--

_(later)_

_Remarkable_

"Your baby is the miracle the whole world has been waiting for."--Jasper, _Children of Men_

_--_

"It's remarkable," Carlisle murmured, holding the baby in his arms as Esme dozed lazily. The remarkable thing, in fact, that Carlisle was referring to was that the baby in his arms' eyes were closed, and his tiny chest rose and fell steadily in sleep. Remarkable. "It's just remarkable," he repeated.

"It is, isn't it?" Esme sighed, a long, wide smile adding a glow to the red tinted light. "Our remarkable son."

"It's like..." Carlisle breathed, gently rocking the baby in his arms. "It's like he's...completely immune to the illness...like he's _human."_

He pressed his finger into the boy's soft skin, watching his blue veins throb, watching his chest rise and fall, watching watching watching.

"He drank the blood, though," Esme whispered. "He drank the blood we gave him...but..."

"He's sleeping," Carlisle remarked. "I can smell the blood in him. I can hear his heart beat. His skin is warm. But he drank the blood."

Esme smiled and stroked the boy's cheek with the back of her hand. "Remarkable," she said, the hint of laughter in her voice.

Carlisle shook his head, for a moment completely forgetting the probes that may or may not be working, forgetting the laws he didn't understand, forgetting the disease and the blood red sky and the terrible impossibility, the terrible_ danger_, of it all. Everything turned into this, his son--his s_on--_and everything he meant. "What," he said, his own lips quirking, "shall we call our remarkable son?"

The women, eternally young yet so, so old, let her grin overtake her as she said with unrestrained glee: "Edward. His name is Edward."


	4. ten million slaves

21 Guns

_chapter one_

"Ten Million Slaves"

Sitting down here fallout shelter  
Paint my walls, twice a week  
Sitting down here fallout shelter  
Think about the slaves, long time ago

-"Ten Million Slaves," Otis Taylor

"We're all mad here."

--The Cheshire Cat, _Alice's Adventure in Wonderland_

"The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch could be _our_ journey."

_---_Rod Sterling_, the Twilight Zone_

"I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful."--Bella Swan, _Twilight_

**12.3.11**

The Humvee bounced violently as it was veered down the cracked pavement, the sky getting bluer and bluer as the small rise of the town made itself known. Bella looked listlessly out the window, feeling uncomfortable as the truck jarred the soldier beside her, his large frame crushing her against the door. The air was stale after several hours of none-stop driving.

"Can I open the window?" she asked, trying to pull herself into a more controlled position, only to be knocked down so that her lower back was lying on the seat and the rest of her barely hung on the seatbelt.

The soldier did not move, and his lips seemed unreal as they said, "They don't open."

Bella cleared her throat and felt the beads of sweat drip down her cheek. This is how it had been since she had left Arizona; she asks a question, they answer her in the most least helpful way imaginable, and then they fall back into silence. The soldier still gripped his gun--gleaming, austere in it's perfection--in the same position he had it in when they took her from the Council House, where the area's leaders lived in blissful naivety of the world outside. She had known they were coming; she had gotten a graph from her father, Charlie Swan, only days before. And, days before that, she had graphed _him _about her and her mother, how they were in danger, how they lived too close to the ghettoes, how the fences were weak and rusted. How they wouldn't be fast enough to outrun them.

For as long as Bella had known him--her whole life, coincidently--he had been a proud man. He would never admit to weakness, never admit to anything being stronger then himself. Never admitted when he was wrong.

Never.

When she got the graph, it was on simple white paper, yellowed around the edges. _I'll send for you, _it had said. _Stay in the Council House, do not go outside._

The Council House in Phoenix was nothing grand; an old apartment building, long abandoned by it's tenants. Sturdy enough, with red brick walls and thick Plexiglas windows, the inside probably the least weathered out of all the homes in Arizona (at least the ones she'd seen). The Council consisted of four men and a women, all old and as worn as the home they lived in. They had a look about them like they had already seen enough of the world and had given up, had already grown tired of this constant wariness. It was easy for them to give up, really. They lived at the top floors, where the walls were thickest, where the infected didn't trash at the outside and smash at the windows. Where they couldn't hear the sound of the ravenous, fevered things breaking from their engagement on the end of town. Where they couldn't hear their soldiers shrieking, couldn't hear the gunshots and the sound of blood hitting the wall.

Bella, however, was on the sixth floor, and she could hear _everything._

No one but Bella's mother, Renee, had foreseen the revolt. They had lived closest to the settlement, to the cages where the vampires dragged themselves to and from their small little huts. They were all beautiful---the whitest skin Bella could imagine, all graceful in their movements like their veins were filled with water. Their eyes changed with every feeding. Bella, naturally immune to the airborne venom that surrounded them, had once been sent to deliver their monthly blood bags, and watched with her own eyes as they sunk their teeth into the plastic and sucked at the red until it smeared their faces, and their eyes flashed from the deepest, purest black to a sickly amber, giving them the looks of rabid dogs. Bella thought they looked ill, _frail _even. So, when she heard the fences rattling more then normal, she wasn't worried.

She just didn't know how goddamn _strong _they were.

"What about that one?" She pointed above her, at the small canvas top of the humvee. There was a latch connecting it to the rest of the van.

The soldier squinted at her, the most reaction Bella had seen from him the entire ride. "This is contaminated area."

Bella knew that was a lie--the sky was blue, getting bluer as they got closer and closer to Forks. She remembered an old textbook from her first years of school, explaining how, after the Great White had struck, the world had became condemned, the skies turning the deepest shade of red, the air itself like invisible poison. People became animals, foaming from the mouth and writhing on the ground, screaming about fire and acid and burning! they were burning! They would wake up, sometimes up to a week later, with blood red eyes and pale skin. She remembered the pictures of drained bodies littering the baron remains of towns, of bonfires nearly touching the sky, of beautiful, vicious, diseased human-like creatures staked through the limbs and thrown into the flames like bags of hay.

Eventually, as the years went by, the skies faded. Ground Zero, as it was called, remained blood red, as the closest areas became orange, yellow as it got farther, white, then finally blue, right above what was once Washington. Some said it was the only place on Earth were it was possible to live peacefully, which Bella had never argued. Though she had lived in relative sanctuary in Arizona, living peacefully and _living _in general were two separate things.

Theories have been varied, from poisons still surrounding the red areas causing temporary insanity, to the old color equals mood theory (red is angry, blue is calm). It still remains a mystery, but no one has exactly..._volunteered _to venture into the red areas to find out.

As more and more healthy humans were born, they gradually herded the infected into the red areas with a small settlement of humans to keep up with their blood supply. The only time they were allowed into other areas was for labors the humans couldn't be bothered to do.

They were less then a yard away from the Forks entrance. The silhouette wasn't very impressive; shabby wooden farm houses lined the outer fence, with long cylinders sticking out from cracked open windows. Bella assumed they were watch men, ready to alert the city of any unwelcome visitors. They blocked the view of the inside of the town, but she could see the small outline of a church tower above one of the shorter homes.

Bella tried to think of the last time she had seen her father. She drew a blank.

"This is 52-B34," said the driver, and Bella heard the hiss of a radio. "Carrying Swan. Allow access."

There was a moment of silence before a loud creaking sound cut through the air like a sharp rock.

The gates were opening.

_bella_

From the little knowledge I had of vampires, there was one discernable thing I held as fact from the day I was born:

If given the opportunity, they _will _kill you.

So, as we bump through the first square mile of Forks, I am nervous. I am nervous for the blood in my veins, I am nervous for the beating of my heart, I am nervous for my eternal soul. I look down at the fat blue veins protruding from my arm. And I listen to the savage howls of the undead slaves thrashing at seemingly supernaturally strong fencing lining the city. Some town have rows of trees. Not Forks.

I don't realize I'm shaking my head and muttering to myself until the soldier beside me says, "It's only for the first yard. You'll be living in the center of the city."

That didn't help. At _all._

God, I thought they didn't allow them in them in cities?

"Will those fences hold them?" I asked quietly, my hands flying to my hair and combing it mindlessly.

The soldier didn't look at me. He spoke as though reading from a text book---"The fences are reinforced with the remains of disorderly Infected throughout the years. Only the tamest Infected are allowed inside the gates."

I swallowed. This is tame?

I should know this---I've lived with Renee in the outer most section of Phoenix, where the Infected ran ramped inches from our small home. But, in all honesty, neither my mother or I had been well informed of the precautions, the vampires themselves. We just blindly trusted that the Council would keep us safe.

Because that ended so well, didn't it?

xXxXx

The screams reached a crescendo.

After being discreetly hustled from the HumVee, I found myself standing uselessly inside a soundproof precinct, watching men in tattered pressed uniforms of all colors rush from side to side, files open or weapons out or just pacing. An office door stood directly in front of me, glass, with a small crack falling down the side. The sign on the front said: **HEAD HUNTER: **_**CHARLES SWAN **_

I could see through the murky glass a figure sitting on a desk, rifling lazy through what looked to be old papers. Taking his damn time, to.

I turned to the Hunter beside me. My pants--pale blue and coarse, mandatory for all the Immune--felt stiff in the mild room. "Excuse me," I said, "but could I step outside."

He didn't look at me. "I'm ordered to wait with you until Chief Swan is available."

Available. He has to be _available_. For his own daughter.

I bounced on my heels, pulling at the neck of my sweatshirt and eyeing the soldier reproachfully. He was young, maybe a bit older then me. Probably straight out of training camp. All Hunters had different uniforms, not to identify rank or anything. Probably just because they needed something to stand out. This one wore a beige, a bit too tight on his wiry muscles. He looked forward.

"If I hit you," I said, "would you hit me back?"

He didn't say anything.

I smiled to myself, inching closer to him and placing a firm hand on his bulking shoulder. "If I..._kicked_ you, would you kick me back?"

Nothing.

Even the Hunter's in Arizona, who had to deal with a constant stream of mobs and violence, weren't this uptight.

"If I..." I said, "_screamed_ at you?"

He shrugged off my hand, barely a jerk of a movement but effective.

"If I screamed at _your mother_?" I said, standing on my toes to look him directly in the eyes.

Nothing.

"Come on, man," I said, "it's called homeland defense. I'm sure your mother would love to hear you say..._that," _I said, poking his thin, proud nose. He moved back and glared at me.

"Isabella," I heard a man's voice, "_what_ are you doing?"

I turned quickly, blushing. My father stood tall, shutting his office door behind him with a manila envelope in his hand and a scowl on his face. His mustache had gone peppered, along with his hair. A jagged scar ran down his left eye to the bottom of his chin, distorting his features in a way that wasn't exactly hideous, but not quite easy on the eyes either.

Just like I remembered him.

"Hey, dad," I said, folding my hands together behind my back and giving him a smile. "I just...you know...been standing out here for, like, an hour."

He sniffed and nodded at the Hunter, jerking his chin towards the rows of desks. He gave me a look before disappearing inside the torrent of multi-colored soldiers.

Charlie stares at me, appraising me like he would a weapon. Checking for weaknesses.

"Look how much you've grown," he noted, with a touch of sentiment.

Standing awkwardly in the limbo of importance and irrelevance, I replied, "Yeah, that happens."

He didn't seem fazed by the remark, adjusting the envelope from one hand to the other before finally passing it to me. "Here's a copy of the city's guidelines. I expect you read it in full. You won't get your Roaming Card until you take the test."

The envelope was thick, about the size of the tattered old text Renee had kept in the kitchen. I had never opened it.

"Roaming Card?" I asked.

"You need one to leave the house by yourself," he explained. "Until then, there will be a guard with you at all times."

I suppressed a grimace at the thought of one of these statues following me around. I wondered if he remembered I was Immune--maybe he'd let me to skip the test.

"So..." I said, weighing the file in my hands, "when's this test?"

Charlie seemed passive, holding his hands behind his back as though waiting for something. "It's late. I'll send a van to bring you home."

In ten minutes I was in another humvee, bumping along a dirt road with the sky growing darker and darker, the screams growing louder and louder. I blinked at the rows of houses, leaning in like a fire-arm solute. Charlie promised he'd be back before the sun came up the next morning.

I watched the fences, the fluorescent figures darting back and forth, hopelessly thrashing at their prison. Wobbling huts could be seen far behind them, some bristling in the wind. Guards stood at a distance, guns poised dangerously low, jabbing at any limbs that stretched through the holes in the fence. The screams have never seemed so loud.

I once heard on a radio broadcast that there were more Infected in the world then humans. That if you listened, even in the quietest of deserts in the most obscure parts of the world, you could hear the echo of their shrieks. Ten million slaves, screaming for God knows what.

The slaves sing to me all along the town, as I climb from the humvee and stumble down the long path towards Charlie's home. I close the door, I lock it, I throw my fist against it. I run up the dusty steps, where my bags wait in front of a chipped white door. I close that door, too. I close it and kick it. Because the screams are so loud, loud in a way I've never heard before. And the only other sound is gunshots.


	5. peace sign up, index down

21 Guns

Chapter 2

Peace Sign Up, Index Down

__

Hands before you's a man that built a castle with sand  
With no regards for tide waves and finally established  
Til the water comes in gallon drums and wipes away my palace  
But now I'm sittin' lovely off in wonderland with Alice

-"Peace Sign Up Index Down," Gym Class Heroes

"He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength."-Cormac McCarthy, _All the Pretty Horses_

"I'd noticed that his eyes were black – coal black."

_(edward)_

**12.3.11**

The half way house was abuzz with an unusual amount of excitement. For what, I hadn't the slightest idea.

By excitement, I of course meant excessive whispering and low-pitched giggles.

Alice, with her legs crossed and her limp black hair falling over her face, toyed with a small crayon nub. Green smears formed as she rolled it between her fingers, vibrant against her pale skin. She looked at the circle of children thoughtfully. "What do you suppose they're all excited about?"

"No idea," I said.

Kirby, the old women who cooked the mush and cleaned the dirt, shushed at the children when they scuttled into the pile of dust she had collected with a broom. Deep set lines all over her face gave her a menacing appearance. Someone once said she wasn't human, but some kind of horrible beast that ate children and painted her room with their blood, and it was still being debated how correct these assumptions could prove to be. As far as we knew she was a dragon waiting to let out her poisonous tongue.

I looked out the window, at the fences and the pale people behind it. I waited for Kirby to make her slow exit from the room to reach out and grab a child I knew was there. Even though they try to be quiet, tip-toeing and hushing each other, there isn't much I can't hear.

The girl squealed when I pulled her by the hem of her collar and placed her beside Alice, who looked at me with that way of hers, the one that was always bored and curious at the same time.

The room went as silent as it had been all day. There was the upside to being among the oldest in this place; you commanded respect.

"What are you all whispering about?" I asked, not unkindly. The floorboards creaked beneath shifting heals.

"Don't you know?" she asked softly, quietly.

"Why would he be asking if he knew?" Alice snapped, leaning back against the window frame. She never was a patient one.

The girl, who's name was Kate, or Katherine, or something to that effect, looked warily in Alice's direction. I felt a twinge of sympathy.

"One of the Hunter's, he got a girl from the yellow skies. She's comin' to live here," she said, quickly, with her eyes lighting with a renewed wonder.

Huh.

I let the girl go and watched her run off just as Emmett and Rosalie walked in with two bulking sacks of clothes-actually, that's not true. Emmett and Rosalie walked in with two twelve year olds carrying the sacks for them.

The boys looked up at Emmett and, at his nod, they dropped the bags in the middle of the room for the children to sort through.

"Isn't that supposed to be your job?" Alice asked.

Emmett smiled that smile he had-a startling white, considering all anyone put in their mouths anymore was rotten fruit and cigarettes-and walked the three steps towards where Alice and I sat, Rosalie close behind. "Kids could use the exercise."

Rose plopped lightly on the old armchair she had silently marked as her own, pulling her feet up and pulling out a smoke. "Besides, I'm the one who washed them."

I looked at the pile of shirts and dresses. It was filthy

"So what's this about a Hunter's daughter moving in?" I asked, offering Rosalie the lighter I kept, even though I didn't smoke and it was devoid of any fluids.

She shrugged and waved her hand at the lighter, taking a matchbook from her coat pocket and holding it up to the roll. "I dunno. Some kind of uprising in one of the colored states. I think her mom got hacked'r something'."

"_Head_ Hunter," Emmett added, seating himself on the armrest of the chair. "God knows bitch'll be under surveillance."

I chewed at a yellow-tinted hangnail on my thumb. "They're just letting her in? No one new's come around since Alice."

Alice cringed slightly beside me. It was a widely retold story how she had showed up in the front gates of Forks, Washington, half-naked and sobbing, dragging a barely conscious blond boy behind her. They had only let her in after (thoroughly) searching her for bite marks. She was clean, but the boy had it right on the neck, his blond hair soaked with blood. This was as his third day was approaching and, despite Alice's protests, they had thrown the screaming seventeen year old in with the Infected, behind the gates. I hadn't seen him too much since, just enough to know his name was Jasper and that he was very much among the dead.

"You heard him," Rosalie reminded, "she's the Head's."

This just spoke for itself, really.

I can remember the exact moment I had met Rosalie and Emmett.

We were all children, they on the brink of adulthood, I a shivering mess with an old bag filled with clothes and a mumbling Kirby urging me inside. Since the moment I first laid eyes on them, they had never been anything short of intimidating. Emmett was a large, bulking thing, towering over all the other children in the town, and Rosalie was nearly as beautiful as the Infected.

It had taken them quite some time to warm up to me. I think they smelt the venom on my tongue, the foreign blood still sticky in my throat. I couldn't be sure, though.

It was late when we heard the car rolling down the street.

The sound was hard to miss. Most of us had only seen cars a handful of times, and the youngest had probably only seen them in pictures. But it was a strange sound to all our ears, the rolling, the crunching, of something much heavier then all of us cruising with perfect fluidity down the roads we looked at every day. Anyone asleep immediately woke, while everyone else had jumped from whatever perch they had taken and crowded to the window. I only knew this because I, at the time, was looking through the peek hole Emmett had spooned in through the door, leading into the play area that doubled as a bedroom for most of the younger ones. Why? Hadn't a clue. Maybe it was good for spying.

But Rosalie, Emmett and Alice had quickly beckoned me over to the window, and I looked out and watched this little rickety hunk of medal and rubber bounce down the road, watched it go until it was out of sight and kept watching until the last little bump left earshot. And then I went to bed, because what was there to see?

Other then the piercing eyes that had looked out the window. Other then that.


	6. inter: till it be morrow

****

Intermission:

_Till It Be Morrow_

_____"I say there are spots that don't come off... Spots that never come off, d'you know what I mean?"____-J.K. Rowling, __Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_

Sweet, so would I,  
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.  
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,  
That I shall say good night till it be morrow. [_Exit above_]

-Juliet, Romeo and Juliet.

3.4.05

"Edward, sweetie," Esme called, punching a small hole into the plastic blood bag and pouring a stream of red liquid into a worn wooden cup. "Elbows off the table."

Edward scrunched up his small, pale white nose and slid his arms off the wooden, mite-bitten tabletop and down to his side. His eyes never left the small, black-an-white television set on the opposite counter. "When's dad coming home?"

Esme slid the cup towards her son, pouring what was left of the bag into her own cup, barely filling it half way. She sipped it slowly, glancing at the scuffed digital clock above the stove. "Oh, any minute now. Drink your dinner, and-" she clicked off the television "-then finish your novel."

The boy groaned, falling back on the end of his chair and tipping it back, the legs dangerously teetering. "Why do I have to read that stupid book anyway?"

Esme turned to the stove, pretending to adjust the notches while she hid an affectionate smile. "Don't you want to grow up smart like your father?"

Edward snorted, and Esme heard the sound of him scuffing the bottom of his cup against the table, the slosh of the liquid against the wood, smelling the stale smell of the cow blood float through the air. "If he's so smart why can't he get any decent blood..." he muttered, so quietly any human wouldn't have heard it. Esme, however, heard it as clearly as she would had Edward been standing right beside her.

She slammed her hands against the stove top, feeling the dent her palms left in the thin Plexiglas and the cheap metal. Her teeth clenched.

"Don't," she said harshly, "talk about your father like that."

She sensed Edward recoil and, before he could say anything further, the door burst open. Carlisle came in, his breathing halted and his clothes shredded. He held a stake in his hand, clear liquid soiling the tip. "We have to get out of here," he said hurriedly. "_Now."_

"Carlisle," Esme said, looking up from the stove and gazing at her husband, "what-"

"There's no time," he said impatiently, dropping the stake with disgust. He took Esme by the arms and looked at her with such an intensity that a chill ran up her spine. "They're coming. They're invading every home in the area. The human villages are revolting. I need you to get your things and _run."_

"What?" Esme shouted, looking outside as their neighbors ran from their homes with sacks in their hands. The faint cry of a riot could be heard distantly. "What's this about?"

"God, what do you _think_, Esme?"

She was silent for a moment.

"What do we do?"

"You," he said hurriedly, "will run. I'll bide you some time."

She shook off his hands with reproach. "_No," _she hissed. "Don't be a damn _fool, _Carlisle."

"Esme, please," he pleaded. His faint blonde hair fell from it's usually kept fashion and fell in his face. "They're coming...you have to take Edward and go. _Now."_

Suddenly the roar hit a crescendo, so loudly even Edward could hear it. He jumped to his feet. "I can help too, dad," he said. "I'll fight too."

"No you _won't," _Esme cried. Her chest tightened. She was losing the carefully constructed control she had managed in the last several decades, losing the home she had built and everyone in it, losing everything everything _everything _in one _goddamn _night. "Damnit, Edward, _no you won't."_

"_Go!" _Carslile cried. "Get whatever you can carry and _go, _Esme."

When neither Esme nor Edward gave a response, Carlisle grunted in frustration and ran to the back alcove that served as Edward's bedroom. He pulled out a small canvas bag from under a cabinet, with an old, faded, long forgotten logo printed on the front. He opened a drawer and started piling mounds of clothes unceremoniously into it. He was muttering.

Edward reminded himself of his small ability as he ran towards his father, his one talent.

He concentrated (not an easy task when the sign of impending doom is a uproarious scream in your ear) and managed to catch a faint whisper of his father's thoughts:

_He can pass for normal-_

_but Esme-_

_crowd-_

_stake-_

_as long as he doesn't-_

_he can make it-_

_he can-_

_save himself-_

_but Esme-_

_they're coming-_

"_Edward." _Suddenly Carlisle froze, turning to Edward with a fierce glare on his face. "Do. Not. Read my mind."

Edward tensed and nodded.

He remembered, once, when he was younger and he heard his parents arguing.

It was the night of his eighth birthday, after the presents and the dinner and the singing, and he was supposed to be in bed. His father had gotten him a small square, brown, that melted in between his fingers. Edward remembered thinking it looked like cow crap, from the lumps he'd seen while on his month's community service. Carlisle had told him to taste it. Esme had gotten a look in her eye, her smile turning sour but unrelenting, unfaltering. Her eyes glared at Carlisle, giving her the look of some kind of beast in the shadows. Especially under the red glow of evening.

Edward ate it (it tasted delicious, if it matters) and gone to bed.

_"-has to learn eventually. We can't keep him here forever."_

_"We've kept him safe so far, I don't-"_

_"If the neighbors don't smell him first, that damn probe will finally kick in and notify the Hunters. I'm just trying to get him ready...if we have to send him away."_

And that was all Edward had time to remember before his father slammed the canvas bag into his arms. He kneeled down and looked his son in the eye, the first time in...a long time. His eyes were dark, dark gold. Edward knew they would soon meld with his pupils into a deep, ravaged black if he didn't get more blood soon.

"Edward, listen to me," he said. "You and your mother-you keep running. No matter what happens, you keep running. Even," He stopped breathing, as though he were afraid it would shake. "Even if your mother can't...you keep running." His eyes flashed, dulled, dried. "Keep going until the sky is blue."

Edward wanted to snort at the idea, looking at his father with a mixture of disbelief and fear. "Where the sky's _blue? _What are you-"

"-trust me, Edward. Promise me you'll keep running," his father said.

And, for the first time in his life, Edward did not trust him. He didn't trust him at all.

Still, he nodded. He nodded like a dumb little kid, and he squeaked, "I promise."

His mother was behind him, shaking and looking small in her oversized, worn dress, and when Carlisle stood up, she dove into his chest with a sob. He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her briefly, quickly, reluctantly letting her go are less then a second had passed. The roar of the crowd got louder and louder and louder. "Go," he said. He took the stake he had dropped and held it in his hands. "I'll hold them off."

"Dad-" Edward started.

_"Go!"_

Suddenly, his mother had her stony hands on his shoulders, jarringly leading him towards the back and out the fragile screen door.

He couldn't hear a coherent thought within the mile and, as he and his mother got farther and farther away, the sound of the revolt he had yet to see faded off into a dull whisper. Now, the only sound he could hear was his mother's dry, heartbroken sobs as she led him in a superhuman sprint through the cold, barren earth.

And then, the light had shone on them.

His mother burst into a thousand glittering diamonds.

It was the first time Edward had actually seen a vampire in the light. All his life, the sky had been a dark, deep red, and the sun was a dull orange bulb hanging uselessly in the air. He had never been allowed to go outside often, and had never wanted to; the thought of standing out _there, _where everything had a clear tint of deep pink, where everything always seemed dark, where the air smelled like rotten eggs and his neighbors glared at their home with a fierce hunger. Where the ground was dry and cracked, where savage, deformed sort of things crawled around with chomping teeth and poisoned limbs. Where things stood out in vast contrast to one another and the reminder that no immune ones would be coming this month clung to his breath. The looming threat of hunger, the looming threat of being _forgotten_.

But this was normal.

"Shit," he whispered in a daze, blinded by his mother as she sparkled like what he imagined millions and millions of jewels would like. So much so, in fact, that Esme's face had disappeared behind them. And a long, broad spotlight fell on her from miles away. Faltering only in brief flickers. It fell on Edward as he stepped beside his mother.

Until then, they had been relatively concealed, with their dark clothes and devilishly quick pace. But this...

Edward and Esme both realized it at the same time.

With the light on her...

"Edward," Esme whispered, "run."

...they could see her for miles.

And the sudden, assaulting bellow of an angry group of people and the ominous glow of mass fire hit Edward like a tital wave.

_...even if your mother can't...keep running..._

"Edward," Esme whispered. The spotlights were everywhere, spotting the wasteland around them like the most horrible kinds of bugs, following them in every movement they made. "Edward, go."

Edward did not sparkle as the light hit him. He stayed veiled by shadows made by nothing, and the closest he got to glowing was his pale, pale skin against the darkness around him.

He could see them, coming foreword from so far away yet so close, close enough that his mother-weak, as the years had gone on, unable to use the disease to run more then a pace faster then a person-could never out run them.

Only Edward could.

"Go," she said again, her voice growing harsh like it had in the kitchen only moments before. "Edward, _run!"_

And, the only thing he could do that he could never forgive himself for.

He did.

He looked at his mother, opened his mouth, closed it, felt the hot sting of tears on his cheeks, and ran.

Ran past the angry mob with their terrible fire, ran past his doomed mother and his trampled father, ran and ran and ran from the isolation of the red sky, ran into the night and into the day and ran and ran and ran until the sky started to change color, started turning orange and a sickly white and, when he started seeing that fade into a gloomy, murky blue, he finally fell to the ground and slept.


End file.
